Abstract
Understanding and governing human settlement patterns is a major challenge of the urban age. While rural settlements emerge as parts of agricultural landscapes, cities typically evolve in economically strategic locations, and over time form hierarchical systems of cities. Purposeful planning and the collective, self-organized behavior of the inhabitants interact in the development of regional settlement patterns. Since self-organizing systems often produce fractal patterns in nature, this study combines approaches of land use science, city ranking, and urban planning under a fractal theory framework, to analyze the settlement system of the Indian Punjab. Scaling levels were defined by discontinuities in the size distribution of built-up areas (Global Urban Footprint), which correlated to population-based classifications (r = 0.9591). Self-similarity across scales was supported by geo-statistical similarity (p < 0.05) of distances and angles between settlements of successive classes, and the overall fractal dimension of DB = 1.95. When compared to a modeled Sierpinski Carpet, more than 50% of the settlements met the fractal geometry rules at larger scales. The spatial distribution of small villages, however, deviated, indicating a scale-related shift in organizing principles. Explicitly acknowledging cross-scale relations and self-organisation in regional planning policies may lead to more sustainable settlement structures that are in harmony with natural system properties.
Highlights
Human activities are increasingly shaping the Earth’s surface
Many built-up areas structurally follow a centrality principle with several hierarchical layers: a primary central place is surrounded by secondary centers, which are further surrounded by tertiary centers, and again by smaller s ettlements[10,11]. This principle results in a distribution in space that is self-similar through scales, as described by fractal patterns, such as the “Sierpinski Carpet”[12] (Fig. 2)
Starting from the striking settlement pattern in the Indian Punjab, we explored how well it complies with the fractal geometry of a Sierpinski Carpet, and could show substantial evidence for self-similar, fractal features in the real-world landscape
Summary
Human activities are increasingly shaping the Earth’s surface. In view of accelerating urbanisation in many regions of the world, there is growing interest in the analysis of settlement patterns fueled by a desire to trace and project urbanisation development over time, derive cause-effect mechanisms, and direct rural–urban transformation towards desired trajectories. Agricultural land and housing, along with the connecting infrastructures (streets, railways, waterways), are virtually the only landscape features (Fig. 1) While this is, on one hand, obviously a result of a site-specific history, we aim to determine whether the Punjab landscape may exemplify some general principles of (self-)organisation which, if properly understood could apply to other areas of the world operating under similar agro-ecological conditions. Many built-up areas structurally follow a centrality principle with several hierarchical layers: a primary central place is surrounded by secondary centers, which are further surrounded by tertiary centers, and again by smaller s ettlements[10,11] This principle results in a distribution in space that is self-similar through scales, as described by fractal patterns, such as the “Sierpinski Carpet”[12] (Fig. 2).
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